


The Roof

by Saziikins



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Ignores most of canon after series 02, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 01:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7824562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saziikins/pseuds/Saziikins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock hadn’t known until today that Greg goes here every year, up onto Bart’s roof, where he stays and drinks and continues to mourn. Sherlock cannot understand what comfort it offers him. Yet Sherlock stays beside him on the blanket with stones digging into his back, because he wants to understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Roof

He finds him on the roof. He has a bottle of beer in one hand, half a cigarette in the other, and he is lying on his back on a blanket, staring up at the sky. He startles when he hears the door close, but he doesn’t react to Sherlock’s presence, just continues to lie there, gazing up at the universe. 

There isn’t really anything to say. 

Sherlock makes his way over the gravelly surface, drops down onto the blanket and lays on his back beside him, the small space between them somehow feeling like an enormous void. The moon is bright, seemingly low in the sky. It is cool out, but neither of them have bothered with their coats. 

Greg passes the cigarette over, and Sherlock has a drag and stamps out the light. They lie there for a while, silent, gazing up into the clear skies. Sherlock doesn’t need to ask, not really, he already knows the answer. But he cannot stay silent for long, not like Greg can.

“Have you done this every year?” he asks. 

“Every one,” Greg replies, then adds “sorry” as if he is aware his disconsolate tone is cracking through his voice. 

“I didn’t die,” Sherlock points out, turning his head to look at him. 

Greg doesn’t react, just keeps staring up at the sky, his lips pressed together, and Sherlock knows that for the past two years, those words have offered little comfort. Greg thought he was dead for two years, and he has grieved for four years, and he has mourned, and has never really moved on. 

Sherlock hadn’t known until today that Greg goes here every year, up onto Bart’s roof, where he stays and drinks and continues to mourn. Sherlock cannot understand what comfort it offers him. Yet Sherlock stays beside him on the blanket with stones digging into his back, because he wants to understand. And he cannot do that at home alone. 

John got over it, Sherlock thinks. He got married and had a baby, and he doesn’t even get angry when Sherlock mentions it anymore. Mrs Hudson berated him and moved on, and Molly and Mycroft both knew it was fake anyway, so they never mourned, never wondered what had happened that day Sherlock had jumped. 

Still. It’s been four years. And even if Greg mourned then, he shouldn’t mourn now, not alone on the roof, when Sherlock is still alive.

“I am alive now,” Sherlock points out, though it is completely superfluous for him to do so, because clearly he is alive and speaking and breathing right beside him.

“Sherlock, that’s not…” Greg sighs and swigs from his beer and falls silent again. 

“What is it?” Sherlock asks, and he hopes he doesn’t sound like he is trying to solve a puzzle. Yes, it’s confusing, and yes, he wants answers, but he wants to offer comfort more. It’s an unnatural feeling, that one, but, if he is honest with himself, he has wanted to reach out to Greg in that way for two years now. 

For two years, he has seen Greg’s despondent expression when he thinks no one is looking. Sherlock’s chest clenches every time, yet, up until now, he hasn’t been able to unravel what it means. 

Greg is worn around the edges these days. As scuffed as his shoes. He has a haunted look in his eyes sometimes, that of a man who had loved and lost too much. Yet he smiles with the warmth of a hundred open hearths, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening. And even when those smiles are false, he hides it well. Not well enough, not from Sherlock, but who can hide anything from Sherlock? 

“Lestrade?” Sherlock prompts.

“I am glad you’re back, Sherlock, don’t think I’m not.”

“I know that.”

Greg bites his bottom lip and covers his eyes with his hand and it takes all of Sherlock’s will-power not to slide closer, not to scrutinise as much of his expression as he can see through this dark. But he looks away, and gives him some privacy. 

“Do you hate me for what I did?” Sherlock asks, staring up at the stars. “I know John did for a while, and I know it isn’t easy to forgive.”

Greg uncovers his face. “Oh, God, no, Sherlock, I couldn’t hate you.”

He’s relieved. It would hurt to have Greg hate him. It would hurt to have Greg angry at him, and perhaps that’s why Sherlock’s here on this rooftop, trying to understand. He waits for Greg to speak, and he doesn’t, and it’s annoying, but Sherlock has time to wait. He doesn’t have patience. Not usually. But he will try tonight, because this seems important. 

He taps his fingertips together, looking around the roof, trying to see how many beers Greg has had. But it’s too dark to tell. 

Think, he has to think. He looks at Greg again, to the tension in his jaw, lines on his forehead, and Sherlock wants to smooth it all away. He wants to say something to erase the hurt, and he isn’t sure he has the words, nor the actions. Maybe it would be even better if he left, but he is here now, and he doesn’t want to leave Greg alone. 

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock whispers, and he swallows back the sudden lump in his throat, because he knows he has never said those words, he’s never apologised for pretending to die. 

“It’s okay,” Greg chokes out, and Sherlock cannot bring himself to look over. It is a private thing, this grief, and Sherlock is intruding. 

Sherlock has never apologised for leaving Greg alone, even though he knows Greg spent those two years Sherlock was away without any friends or comfort. He knows Greg kept a box of his belongings for that whole time, and Sherlock has never been able to understand that either. He has the box now. He’ll give it back to Greg one day, he always thinks. He wants Greg to have those pieces of him, yet there has never been the right time to hand it over. 

“It’s not okay,” Sherlock says, because he knows that with absolute clarity.  

“I forgive you anyway.”

“Then why come up here?”

Greg wipes his eyes and sits up. “I came here when I thought you were dead. I used to question why you did what you did. Then you came back, and I still wondered.”

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says again, sitting up too, though keeping out of Greg’s eyeline. He pulls his knees up to his chest and watches the other man, watches him wipe his eyes again, and Sherlock longs to wipe those tears away from him. He wants to rest his head between Greg’s shoulder blades, and hold him and feel his raw emotions, feel his heart beating, feel his trembles, his shivers. It is an uncommon, unexpected desire, yet Sherlock does not recoil from it. He sits on the thought, throws it around for a few seconds, and lets it settle over him. 

He wants to pull all the hurt from Greg’s chest. He wants to unravel it, watch it slide away, and he isn’t sure he ever can. He has caused this, and he doesn’t know if he can ever make it right. 

Greg checks his watch and sighs. “I’m bloody freezing,” he mutters, and drags himself to his feet. “Coming?”

Sherlock hums his agreement, and collects the blanket, and follows him down the steps. They get the tube together, not sharing a word, not looking at one another. Greg doesn’t ask Sherlock to follow him to his flat, but he does so anyway, and he isn’t turned away as they go through the door. 

It’s clean-ish, lived in, with worn furniture and secondhand belongings. With the lights on, Sherlock can see the strain in Greg’s face, and he wants to wipe it all way, wants to make him smile, make him laugh, because only those expressions can put him at ease now. 

Greg pours two cups of tea, and they stand opposite one another in the kitchen with their mugs, heads bowed, as though language has been stolen from them. Sherlock tries to watch him from underneath his lashes, but Greg hardly moves and ignores his tea. He doesn’t flinch when Sherlock takes the mug from him and puts it on the counter. 

Greg lifts his eyes to Sherlock’s, and for a moment, the sadness dissipates, replaced by something else, something warmer, softer. When he blinks, the expression is gone, but so is the misery. 

“Why did you come tonight?” Greg asks him. 

“I.” Sherlock frowns, considering it. “I couldn’t understand why you were there.”

“Any closer to working it out?”

“No.”

Greg shrugs. “Nor me,” he admits. “But I go, same day, every year. Just helps. A bit. Clears my head.”

Sherlock rocks on his heels, looking past Greg to the cupboards, and his dirty dishes. He hasn’t got anything to say, and, even if he did, he isn’t sure he’d know how to say it. Greg is a man who deals in actions, in gestures, in touches. So Sherlock drops his head forward, until it lands on Greg’s shoulder, and he closes his eyes. It’s uncomfortable on his neck, he’s taller than Greg is, but Greg’s hand rests solid between his shoulder blades, and that’s welcome and soothing. Seconds pass, perhaps even minutes do, and their breathing falls in sync. Sherlock lifts his hand to Greg's chest and finds his heart, and feels it beating, imagines he can feel every part of Greg, all those swirling emotions and heavy nights spent on the roof. 

Greg’s arms are round his shoulders, and their chests are pressing together, with only Sherlock’s hand between them as he counts the beats of Greg’s heart. They seem to have come closer as the seconds passed, and Sherlock hardly noticed it. Now he cannot step back. He doesn’t want to. 

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock mutters.

“It’s okay.”

“It clearly isn’t.”

Greg sighs. “It is okay, Sherlock. I can’t explain it. I can’t do pretty words, and I can’t explain what I’m thinking, and that drove my ex-wife round the twist, trust me. But it is okay.”

Sherlock glances up at him, keeps his hand pressed against his chest, because he is connected to that beat now, he wants to always feel it. Greg’s expression has softened out, the tension somewhat evaporated. Those dark eyes are fixed on Sherlock’s, and time itself has slowed down, centred itself around their shared breaths. 

It’s easy, so easy, for Sherlock to press his mouth to Greg’s, the kiss dry, hesitant. It doesn’t seem to matter that Greg waits a beat before his lips part, that it’s breathy and hardly a kiss at all. It doesn’t matter, not a bit, that they part so the tips of their noses brush together, and Sherlock’s lips find the space above Greg’s mouth rather than their true destination. It seems to escape Greg’s notice that Sherlock is shaking against him, that Sherlock hasn’t stopped feeling his heart beat, that Sherlock cannot comprehend why Greg’s arms are still around him, why he is still being held so close. 

He cannot, not for a single second, fathom why Greg’s lips return to his, one slow brush of mouths, then another, a kiss at the corner of Sherlock’s mouth, hands stroking up and down his back. Sherlock cannot pick apart why he suddenly feels so wrecked and alive all at once. He knows he has never felt this way, and he’s suddenly afraid. Afraid like he was up on that roof that day with Moriarty, terrified he would lose everything he held so dear. Everything he still holds so dear.

Greg’s eyes search his face. Sherlock rests against him, buries his head into his neck and kisses his skin, breathes him in. 

They stand there for the longest time. They share no words as they move to the living room, still holding onto one another, lips meeting in the lightest of kisses. Greg stops in his tracks, takes Sherlock’s face in his hands. “Sherlock,” he whispers, and kisses him again, soft, slow, sweet. Sherlock chases those lips as they retreat, and Greg’s mouth turns up at the corners, and those brown eyes are sparkling, joyous.

“I know why I went on the roof,” Sherlock murmurs, and kisses Greg’s chin, and then his cheek, letting his lips linger there so he cannot see Greg’s expression, so he does not leave himself so exposed as he whispers the truth of it. “I was looking for you.”

Greg’s thumbs stroke his cheekbones. He inhales, long, deep, and breathes out, and it’s as though somehow that hurt buried deep in Greg’s chest has unravelled and his body does not seem so tense anymore. Sherlock risks a look at him, and Greg is biting back a smile, though his eyes are watery, emotions blended together, a rich tapestry of feelings over his face. 

“I think I was looking for you too,” Greg murmurs. 

The silence suits them, it isn’t heavy or restless. It wraps around where they stand, where they hold on tight to each other, where they kiss, where they smile, and laugh, and cry and laugh again. 

You always find me, Sherlock thinks as they lie together on Greg’s sofa, wrapped around each other, too uncomfortable to sleep, unwilling to move. You will always find me. And I’ll always find you. 

He closes his eyes, and hopes they’ll climb to the roof together next year. That they will stare up at the stars, and perhaps they'll mourn a little together. Perhaps they'll wish things had happened differently. But perhaps they'll smile too, hold each other, feel the weight of something real and wonderful, rather than the oppressive weight of grief. 

They both still have some moving on to do. 

But at least they won't do that alone.


End file.
